WINSTON-SALEM – Booth, Austin
Pendleton’s searing play about the
legendary theatrical dynasty of the
great tragedian Junius Booth, will open
next week on the University of North
Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA)
campus.

The play will be presented at 8 p.m.
April 15-17 and April 21-24, and at 2
p.m. April 18 and 24 in the Catawba
Theatre of Performance Place on the
UNCSA campus, 1533 South Main St.,
Winston-Salem. Tickets are $12 for
adults and $10 for students and seniors.
Call the UNCSA Box Office at
336-721-1945 for reservations, or to
purchase tickets online, visit:
www.uncsa.edu/performances.

Hailed as a great Shakespearean actor in
his native England (yet in the shadow of
Edmund Kean), Booth in 1821 left his
family for America, where he built his
new career on bringing Shakespeare to
the new nation. He fathered several
children with his mistress, including
Edwin and John Wilkes (the eventual and
infamous assassin to Abraham Lincoln).

Junius Booth (Alex Hoeffler, left) teaches his
son Edwin (Brandon Harris) the art of acting in BOOTH, directed by Gerald
Freedman, running April 15-24 at UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem.
Photo by A. Aycock

Pendleton’s psychodrama focuses on the alcoholic and
increasingly eccentric Junius Booth, a star in the last
years of his career, and son Edwin, a star on the rise.
As the story unfolds, Edwin develops his own theories
about their shared craft, and the tale moves into a much
darker Oedipal struggle between father and son. In the
end, Edwin wins supremacy of the 19th century
American stage, marking a monumental shift in the style
of acting – from formalism to naturalism.

School of Drama Dean Gerald Freedman will direct
college seniors (Studio IV) through the shadowy journey
of Junius Booth’s troubled existence. Freedman has
staged more than two dozen of Shakespeare’s plays along
with dozens of other world classics. He has served as a
leading director and artistic director of Joseph Papp’s
New York Shakespeare Festival, artistic director of the
American Shakespeare Theatre, co-artistic director of
John Houseman’s The Acting Company, and artistic
director of the Great Lakes Theater Festival. He was the
first American director invited to direct at
Shakespeare’s Globe in London.

Best known as an actor and director, Austin Pendleton
debuted as a playwright in the early 1990s with Booth,
followed by Uncle Bob and Orson’s Shadow.
He has been seen on Broadway in The Diary of Anne
Frank, Fiddler on the Roof and Grand
Hotel; in films including WHAT’S UP DOC?, THE MIRROR
HAS TWO FACES, GUARDING TESS, CATCH 22 and FINDING NEMO;
and in television including Frasier, The West
Wing, and St. Elsewhere. For the Broadway
stage, he directed The Runner Stumbles, Spoils
of War, and Elizabeth Taylor in The Little Foxes.

Pendleton will be at UNCSA for the performance of his
play.
He and Dean Freedman are friends, having met during the
run (1962-63) of Oh Dad, Poor Dad… at the Phoenix
Theatre in New York. Pendleton was in the production,
which was directed by Jerome Robbins and assistant
directed by Gerald Freedman.

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is
the first state-supported, residential school of its
kind in the nation. Established as the North Carolina
School of the Arts by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963,
UNCSA opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of the Arts and
Innovation”) in 1965 and became part of the University
of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100
students from middle school through graduate school
train for careers in the arts in five professional
schools: Dance, Design and Production (including a
Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music.
UNCSA is the state’s only public arts conservatory,
dedicated entirely to the professional training of
talented students in the performing, visual and moving
image arts. UNCSA is located at 1533 S. Main St.,
Winston-Salem. For more information, visit
www.uncsa.edu.